WARNING ! WARNING ! MODEL BUILDERS

I checked at the nearest Hobby Lobby a couple weeks ago and was kind of surprised they had only a few WWII models and only one of those was german armor. I think we all know how it goes at the HL: people wait until the 50% off sales then go raid the model shelves and list them on Ebay for full list price plus shipping. That's how it was back in '01 and looking at Ebay recently hasn't done much to change my opinion.

Don't get me wrong. I waited for those sales too but I only bought one of each. As a matter of fact I still have a Dragon Sd. Kfz. 250/1 le spw alte, a Pro Modeler Focke-wulf Moskito and a Revell HE 111 that came from the HL in 2002. My point is this: You had to be quick or the career Ebay sellers would snatch them ALL up before anyone else made it to the store........ those of us with jobs and all that stuff.

Personally, I don't go to HL to buy models.  I simply can't afford their prices.  They have the exact same kits month after month that collect dust on their shelves.  Even when they do mark them down they don't seem to move. 

I live in south Fort Worth and have other options, like HobbyTown in Arlington (20 minutes away).  I'm also a HUGE fan of eBay.  I would, of course, love to support an LHS; but haven't found any around my area.

Their main problem is/was that whoever they had ordering new kits simply played it stupid and kept re-ordering what they sold last week.

Here in Baton Rouge, for a while the owner of our LHS also worked at the Hobby Lobby which was literally across the street from his store, and he was influential in having them get a greater variety of better priced kits, especially from Hobby Craft.

After he left, for the most part, their buyer simply copied the last order, obviously taking no interest in trends, new releases, etc.

As we know, all they would have to do is stick to the lesser priced new releases, such as those from Lindberg, and they could expect a reasonable business.

I mean how many modelers get excited about an odd-ball Porsche Tiger?

Tom T

I think the high price of models is like a monster eating its own children. You'd think that the manufacturers would get the message already that a lot of people aren't buying "new" prices, and would bring the damned prices down already.

There's be more models being sold and it would help a lot of businesses that traffic in models.

the doog

I think the high price of models is like a monster eating its own children. You'd think that the manufacturers would get the message already that a lot of people aren't buying "new" prices, and would bring the damned prices down already.

There's be more models being sold and it would help a lot of businesses that traffic in models.

Its kind of funny. Back when I got into modeling, about 2001, I was ordering them from a hobby shop. Tamiya was top of the line. Dragon was pretty much on a par, or so I was told, with Italeri. I paid $42 for a Tiger, $40 for a Wespe, a Hanomag for $17 and $22 for a Stug IV. So, I kinda figured I was getting ripped off so I went out and bought my first PC, which cost $1700, hands off.

I took a break shortly after I got into weathering in late winter/early spring 2004 and just started again last month. Some of the changes are hard to believe. Dragon went from being a pain in the ass to being the cat's meow. Shanghai Dragon is MIA. Alan, RPM, etc, etc are gone and everything is premade and marketed to modelers. To me that says its either at a peak or its still growing. I don't notice on a lot of things that the price has gone up so much but on some companies, Dragon Smart Kits, maybe Academy and I think Trumpeter, I think Geez Louis! WTH? But then there's kits like Tamiya's Marder III M that you never saw below $40 that you find cheaper, and then there are kits like the Sd Kfz 7/2 that used to go for $20 that are listed on Ebay for up to $80. And still nobody has released a good Admiral Hipper in 1/400 scale. I passed on one for $50 once in order to bid on a pair of WWI SMS Emden and SMS Dresden for $50 apiece.

So back to your point, even back in '02 you knew that if Hobby Lobby ran a sale and you missed out, they'd be listed on Ebay for an under new price a year or so later. Hell, we're stupid. There are lots and lots and lots of kits out there to keep us busy until the price comes down.

Frankly, If Hobby Lobby got rid of all their kits tomorrow I wouldn't hardly notice... I'd miss the 40% coupon on a 40.00 kit, but there's always Ebay... 'Course, I got a tenant that uses his employee discount for me now too.. That's another 15% off those kits..

But I'd wager that I spend far more money in there on diorama materials than kits... I mean, you can get paints, brushes, thinners, glues, more paints, frames, celluclay, styrofoam, dollhouse wallpaper, tallus, balsa, basswood, brass, aluminum, piano wire, vegitation and foliage, super-fine mesh, wood craft sticks, modeling clay, Sculpy clay, resin and casting materials, "water", and the list goes on further from thee, and 40% coupon works on ALL that stuff...

Forgot to mention that probably nobody here yells more about the price of kits these days than me... Yet I see threads all the time about the lemming-like rush to go get the latest version of the 175.00 B/P-901 Belchfire with the PE fret and recessed panel line... (yeah, singular)

Folks will rationalize and justify it with all the "Look what a round of golf costs" rationale, but I ain't a golfer, unless you count "mini" and "PS2"...

I see no fewer than three "different" M1 105mm howitzers on the market, yet the only real difference between them and old Italeri/Testor's kit is about 30 bucks...  And that STOOF revoewed in this issue of FSM for 89.95... No cockpit detail at all, yet the reviewer gave it a "recommendedi (albeit for "intermediate" modelers...)... 

Ya can't have it all... Super-details cost money or time.. I got LOTS of time...

We, as a group, can slam the door on high kit-prices pretty simply...  But that's another rant, and another thread...

But sign me up for that, "Grumpy (and cheap) Old Man" clique...

 Earned that one...  

Hans von Hammer

Forgot to mention that probably nobody here yells more about the price of kits these days than me... Yet I see threads all the time about the lemming-like rush to go get the latest version of the 175.00 B/P-901 Belchfire with the PE fret and recessed panel line... (yeah, singular)

 

...

But sign me up for that, "Grumpy (and cheap) Old Man" clique...

 Earned that one...  

 

It's all my fault, even though we don't have Hobby Lobby out here. I hardly ever ever buy kits anymore, but I've been steadily working down the stash, currently by probably 50%.

I never much could see the sense of a model sitting unbuilt, although they are fun to buy. I just hate spending money. My LHS, where I do go a lot for supplies, has a %25 off sale a couple of times a year and I get the guys to put stuff aside beforehand.

I've bought most of my kits from eBay. Any time I'm at the LHS and I see that new Humbley Pudge "Gallipoli", I force myself to look it up on line on my iPhone, and mostly I can save a bunch by just waiting till I'm home sitting at the PC and drinking a beer.

I have yet to find any signs of intelligent life at HL, and therein lies the problem, I think.

The only time I buy a kit these days is when I see one on sale for a ridulously low price, and only if it's high quality and a subject that I'm interested in.  Case in point:  Last month Squadron advertised the $99 msrp 1/48 Hasegawa F-22-A for only $35!  I ordered one immediately and am having the time of my life building it.  It's extremely well engineered and detailed, over 350 parts, not all of which I will use.  I don't waste my time building and painting details that can't be seen when the kit's completed.  But I digress....

Nice catch, Bondo...

Saw it in another thread here (from someone who's gender is still a mystery to me) and decided to wear it Loud & Proud... (Another reference, musical this time)

But they ain't met a Grumpy Old Man yet... I actually consider myself a rather nice guy, although the world does have a tendency to p*** me off on a regular basis... Well, not the planet... I'm ok with that.. It's the people on it I can't stand...

Especially those under 30.... But, my dad felt the same way about me and my "generation" too I reckon, and let me live anyway...  It'd be better if they'd wear long pants, at least in the winter, (and pull them up) and stop with the hip-hop crap, but who ya gonna complain too?  Alice Cooper wrote of the "Department of Youth", but that was back in the 70s, and you KNOW how hard it is to get rid of civil servants... They stay in those jobs until they die, lol...

At any rate, I'm a clique of one... Most of the time, anyway... But there's gotta be SOMEbody out there feeling the same way, or I'd be the only one bidding on those kits, lol... There's at least two more "HAWK/Lindberg freaks" out there besides ME...  

Like I said earlier, in another thread, I scored this weekend, with ten kits for 160.00 offa Ebay, plus last week I nailed that A6M5 Tami-Zeke for 60%-off (using the coupon and an employee discount)..

The Betty was already gone though...

Anyway, it ain't just Hobby Lobby kits going the way of the dodo... My LHS guy skied out last winter for greener pastures and I thought he was gone forever... Turned out he just went middle-age crazy a few years late.. He's since come back and re-opened... But he won't stock any kits to speak of... He'll order whatever you want, but wants half down, the rest on delivery and I can't blame him... Inventory costs money...

I can't carry the RevelloHawkoLindbergTestor-gram ball alone, although I've been trying like hell, lol... Don't know what more I can do... Already got the the Monogram Mafia build, the Diorama build, the Monogram its I'm doing in the others I'm signed on for...

 I keep trying to post builds that show what can be done with those kits, yet the shiny baubles turn everyone's collective heads because of... What? IS it all because all ya gotta do is glue-paint-decal anymore?  I dunno...  I just can't get my head wrapped around the idea that ONE kit for 80.00 is somehow a better deal than SIX kits for the same money...

I hear, "Bang for the buck" yet at the same time, I hear, "I don't have time to scratch-build"... Who's on a deadline?  Time, in the case of model-building, is ABUNDANT.. Whether you get one kit per year turned out, or 50... (I actually split that, about 25 per year...This year is fewer though, as I'm stck in more dioramas than in previous years, and they're more complicated with lights and stuff...)  All my builds are for dioramas though... I just get ahead of myself... Takes about 20-50 hours per kit, but the dios can run into a couple hundred hours per....

However, I digress...

As it sits right now, H/L is going the way WalMart did, just restocking the racks with what's on the label... Those 200.00 ship kits are gonna sit there until they all get yellow stickers... Even then, they're gonna stay.. Just ain't any ship guys around here...

And I ain't even gonna get started with those pre-painted things...

Add me to that one too. I just near-finished  a $12 Italeri Marder III (H), working on a $12 revell/italeri RSO. Last month I got a $20 Panzerjaeger (A) and a $20 Bison. Last week I got a $12 Italeri Panzer IV (H) and a $16 Stug IV late from dragon. This week I got an Italeri Panzer IV (F) for $15. And those prices include shipping! That leaves a lot of extra money for upgrades and my $50 model is gonna look better some others' $50 models. Shhhhhh!

The only time I buy a kit these days is when I see one on sale for a ridulously low price, and only if it's high quality and a subject that I'm interested in.  Case in point:  Last month Squadron advertised the $99 msrp 1/48 Hasegawa F-22-A for only $35! 

That's relative too... Guess it answers part of my question as well, since even at 35.00, it's too much.. Why? Simple.. I don't do jets, at least none "newer" than Vietnam-era, and even then only certain ones... Even if that kit were priced at 1.50, I'd pass on it... It's the same reason I don't buy ships, cars, trains, etc... Just not my thing..

But for the same money, I'd jump on a 1/32 scale version of the Bf110, Mosquito, or P-61, yet pass if they were much more than that, even five or six bucks more... That's the "cheap" in me though..   And it doesn't have to have 350 parts, doesn't have to have 150... Just has to be "1970s Revell" quality... 

I dunno... I just can't shake this sense of "dread" I have that the hobby will just up and vanish...

There used to be twelve (12) hobby shops in this area, all within a 50-mile radius, not five years ago... Now there are five (and two of them are Hobby Lobby)...  The newest one to open up, "Jay's CD and Hobbies" ( I should smelled a rat right there & then)... Called them a few months ago, when they were flooding the local area with TV spots, to see what kits and kit manufacturers they carried.. Their answer? NONE! ZERO, ZIP, NULL, NADA!...

RC cars and planes out the wa-zoo, and games up the arsche, but not ONE kit, let alone kit manufacturer... Didn't even carry model railroad stuff, not so much as single Tyco loco or Bachmann set, not so much as package of Woodland Scenics grass......  Man, I thought that was a LAW! How can you call yourself a hobby shop without kits and Model RR stuff?

Anyway, I got around 200 kits left in the stash, and that'l likely cover me for the next ten or so years, as long as the eyesight holds out...  But I REALLY would like to build a few of these whiz-bang shake & bake kits, just not at the prices they currently get for 'em...   That's why I have 150 Mongram, Lindberg, HAWK, Testor's, Revell and (old) Tamiya kits and 50 "Dragons, Academys, and Accurate Miniatures"...   That's about the exchange rate, I reckon? 3-1?

That leaves a lot of extra money for upgrades and my $50 model is gonna look better some others' $50 models.

Not of you keep losing parts of them in the grass under that tree...

Hans, that paranoia and sense of loss is just part of getting older, dude

Hans von Hammer

That leaves a lot of extra money for upgrades and my $50 model is gonna look better some others' $50 models.

Not of you keep losing parts of them in the grass under that tree...

 

Hell, who's gonna notice a missing muffler, schuertze, barrel or gun mantlet?

Certainly not me...

Hobby Lobby's in the same position now that Michaels was in several years ago - they've chipped and chipped at the model section to the point where serious modelers have no reason to stop in (or very little). I guess they'll sell more beads...

The way I see it, the problem with their selection is threefold:

1 - Stale inventory. They've been shaking things up lately, kind of, but since I got back into the hobby in mid-2010, it's been a near constant stock. Tamiya Mossie. Tamiya Swordfish. R/M Widow, B-25, P-38, Italeri Spit IX American Aces, somebody's F-86, etc. It never changes. 

2 - SMALL inventory. Seen it once, and it never changes, why go back?

3 - Prices. Some of the kits they chose to stock, WTF? Tamiya's Swordfish is an expensive kit. Not the $80 they charge expensive, but not cheap. But $70 Mossies, even $30 for a R/M Widow. You can buy them cheaper pretty much ANYWHERE else. So why bother?

There are affordable, popular kits available from all the makes they stock, and others besides. They just fail at stocking a compelling inventory for either 1) the advanced modeler or 2) the beginner or casual.

Imagine if this was their stock instead:

• R/M P-47N (joined by the rereleasing Razorback later this year)
• R/M Typhoon
• R/M P-51B and P-51D
• Eduard F6F Hellcat Weekend
• Revell of Germany Arado Ar 196
• Tamiya P-51D, F4U-1D, Spit Mk.I or Mk.Vb
• Zvezda La-5/5FN
• A couple of Eduard bipes
• Decent selection of affordable-ish modern jets (sorry, know jack all about what's out there now)
• In armor, a focus on Dragon/Cyber-Hobby Orange Box releases

With the exception of the Arado and the armor, every single one of those kits should retail for under $30 (under $25 online...but I know HL would jack the prices up).

Yeah, I recently got the R/M P-61 Black Widow for $12 with a coupon at HL.  It's a crappy kit, but since I am (Ahem!) an experienced and skilled modeler, it came out very nice!

We older guys can do a lot using our skills and brains with these older and cheaper kits, and it's more fun, too.  A challenge like that keeps retired minds active!

Its been well over a year since I bought a model from Hobby Lobby.

They are still a decent place to buy my modelling supplies. Much of what I buy is not even in the model section.

I've been buying 2-3 cans of the Testors spray paint (metallics) when they have a 40% coupon.

I keep 5 cans of the dullcoat in stock at all times. I know I will use it and it is simply the best out there.

even $30 for a R/M Widow.

Somebody's gouging that one.. It's here for 16 and change...

novembergray

Hans, that paranoia and sense of loss is just part of getting older, dude

Just cuz yer paranoid doesn't mean that they ain't out to get ya...

Like everyone else I too have seen the decline in kits at HL and am amassed on how many high price ones they keep in stock,  Which brings me to some MORE possible disturbing news about HL.

Hans, you'll like this one...

I am an avid user of HL's 40% off coupon.  That is probably the biggest factor on why I still shop at HL.  I have several friends who work at HL HQ (from the technology side all the way to the guy who travels the world looking for products for HL to buy and sell), I live in Oklahoma City, HL HQ.

These friends are telling me that due to hard times HL is going to limit the 40% coupon to only certain times of the year and the validity dates reduced.  When is this going to happen?  That they have not said.

As for the question of kit and supplies stock reduction, they too said that is coming.

DISCLAIMER:  like everything else around here... it is all a rumor until it actually happens.

Along with Tamigawa,Airfix, and Dragon, I have a number of Testors/Hawk kits, a couple of Aurora,lots of Monogram as well as Revell kits. I have some Lindberg but consider most of them to be "dogs" as far as being good models.

I'd miss the high end Dragon or hard-to-find Trumpeter kits that appear every other blue moon on my local Hobby Lobby shelves. Mainly because I know the 40% off coupon makes the kit a steal and that high end German armor kit is great trading material for the other sites I visit. I've gotten plenty of good allied or modern kits by trading off a new, unopened Dragon or Trumpeter kit I got at Hobby Lobby with that coupon.

Whenever there's a "40% coupon week", I hit the place every day that week, lol.. Even use it on a bottle cement...

Also, I print out three or four of 'em to take with me and I'll give 'em out to guys or gals (there are a few) that're standing in the kit aisle, pondering... You'd be surprised at how many folks are unaware of the things...  But they need to up their selction of Amror and aircraft... I can only buy so many Panthers, Walkers, and P-61s...

AT6

 I have some Lindberg but consider most of them to be "dogs" as far as being good models.

Unfortunately, Lindberg is the only manufacturer who has regularly offered kits of some aircraft such as the

Republic XF-91 Thunderceptor- admittedly very much a "dog" by today's standards,  to basic kits like the Convair XFY Pogo or Douglas X-3 Stiletto in 1/48

I would be nice if Hobby Lobby varied kits much more than currently, but I suspect they might pay more per kit for fewer kits.

Went there yesterday because my wife needed few things.  I love it when she asks me to join her...

You guys were right... the armors and plane section has downsized significantly once again.  I found many kits at the clearance section mostly planes even those nice Tamiya kits.  I even almost bought a wingy thing but I restrained myself this time. 

But I bagged Tamiya Panzer II A/B/C for only $22.  Looked inside as soon as I got home.  Boy, I was so glad I got this kit as the tracks look great and much easier! 

Now I am tempted to go back and buy Tamiya USS Missouri 1/350 kit for $75.  Is that a good kit?

AT6

I have some Lindberg but consider most of them to be "dogs" as far as being good models.

Then be a dog-whisperer, lol...  I know of one "dog" here at FSM that took home the gold with it, using the PT-17 kit...